Symbiosis
by peachypeachy
Summary: After a botched mission, SHIELD Agent Phil Coulson has to share a hotel room in Mexico with Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff.


Phil Coulson walked purposefully through the shabby lobby of the tiny hotel in Monterrey, Mexico where he would be staying the night, along with Agents Barton and Romanoff. He vaguely took in the outdated dark green and maroon color scheme of the room, and found himself unreasonably irritated by the whole building. He was tired and cranky, having just finished dealing with the mess that Strike Team Delta- for whom he was regrettably, ultimately responsible- had made of the mostly botched mission they had carried out that evening. He had even more work to do in the morning.

There had been a hiccup in Barton's timing, when he had gotten caught up in the midst of an unfortunately timed car accident and had been held up by the police. They had lost three minutes overall, but those three minutes had caused a spiral of errors that led to the death of the young kidnapping victim they had been tasked with extracting, and the kidnappers and their boss, a major player in Mexico's sex-traffic trade, had gotten away, albeit temporarily. It had taken nearly six more hours than planned for Romanoff to finally track down the well-guarded boss and take him out. Barton, against orders, had split off and spent those six hours methodically hunting down the four remaining kidnappers, who were not specifically on the target list. While Phil understood Clint's need to try to rectify his failure in saving the young girl, it still left Phil with a huge mess to clean up and a whole lot of paperwork to do. He rubbed his temples with a sigh.

Phil approached the outlandishly ornate front desk, and the desk attendant, a disinterested man of probably 25, to ask for his room key.

"Name please?" the clerk asked, his words barely distinguishable through his thick accent and what may have been a speech impediment. Coulson wasn't sure.

"Jacob Honeycutt," he replied in a thick Texas drawl. The attendant tried to explain something apparently important in very broken and messy English. _This would be so much easier if my cover could just speak Spanish like I actually can,_ he thought to himself, making a mental note to add that detail to the identity back at SHIELD when Fury wasn't looking. It took another very slow attempt for the attendant to explain that there was no room reserved under that name, and that all of the rooms were actually already booked for the convention being held there that week.

Phil swore in his head.

"Try Francis Bard, friend o' mine," he suggested, agitated. He knew for certain that Clint and Natasha had gotten there about a half-hour earlier to patch up and wind down. Bard was Barton's favorite cover name; a rather obscure reference to "Bard the Bowman" from The Hobbit by Tolkien, Clint's favorite author. He thought it was clever. Phil thought it was asinine.

The desk clerk looked at Phil suspiciously for a moment, but then handed over a room key. Phil responded with a slightly sarcastic and drawled "gracias."

Five minutes later, Coulson had arrived outside the door of room 216 after a disgruntled phone conversation with Director Fury, in which he had been informed that SHIELD had only been able to book one room for all three agents because of the short notice, and though Phil was unconvinced that SHIELD did not have it in their power to free up one more hotel room, he did not voice his doubts to his boss. Weary and cursing Barton up and down for creating the need for an unexpected overnight stay in Mexico, he rapped a distinct cadence on the door to identify himself to the two assassins inside, counted to five for fair warning, and let himself in.

Coulson's exasperation waned when he made eye contact with Clint Barton. For as tired as Phil felt, the archer looked a hundred times worse, and physically and emotionally wrecked. He was shirtless and barefoot, wearing only the bottom half of his combat gear, and seated on the edge of one of the two queen beds in the room. _Thank God for that,_ Phil thought. Natasha was bustling around him, cleaning and bandaging the various wounds and scrapes that striped the man's face and torso. Her own uniform, her trademark black Kevlar catsuit, was half-removed as well, the top pulled off and tied messily around her waist, leaving just a black tank top underneath. Barton's shoulders sagged noticeably, and though he quickly straightened up self-consciously, his red, miserable eyes still betrayed his contrition over the events of the day. Coulson suddenly felt quite guilty for forgetting that the particularly disastrous failure to save a life would even affect Clint, who was, after all, a good guy and a friend.

But Clint seemed to visibly shake off the affliction, if only pretending for Phil's sake. Natasha was the first to break the silence.

"What's up?" she asked lightly while she dabbed superglue over a shallow cut above Clint's eyebrow left by flying glass in the car accident. Despite her easy tone, Coulson recognized the message in her body language. It was intentional; she knew he would understand and interpret the warning to leave the topic of the mission alone. Nothing the Black Widow ever did was unintentional, particularly when she was issuing a threat, and Phil decided not to push the subject. Making Natasha Romanoff angry, especially when it came to Clint, was something every sane human who knew her actively avoided_. _He kept his expression carefully blank.

"I'll be bunking with you two tonight," he stated, in his mock-cheerful way.

The agents both stared blankly at him and waited for him to explain.

"Fury could only get one room because of some convention happening this week. Hope it's not too much of an inconvenience," he added with a smile. Natasha's eyes softened.

Clint spoke up. "No, it's fine. We'll just take one bed and you can have the other," he said, glancing briefly at Natasha. If Barton wasn't such a well-trained agent he would be blushing. The two agents avoided looking at each other.

Phil actively decided not to notice the obvious awkwardness. They knew full well that he had already noticed that all of their weaponry and shed clothing was piled on one of the beds, with the sheets turned down and all the pillows on the other bed. Obviously they had been planning to share anyway, but Phil had concluded that it was really none of his business. Although SHIELD had different ideas about fraternization, Coulson had decided that what his agents got up to in their free time was their secret as long as it didn't interfere with their performance in the field. To date it hadn't seemed to affect these two at all: if anything, the strange way they could communicate silently and instantaneously had only made them more effective as a team.

The uncomfortable silence was broken by Coulson's cell phone buzzing in his pocket. He pulled it out, thankful for the distraction, and read the text message: "_outside the door"_ was all it said.

Right outside the door, he discovered, were three small duffel bags: go-bags, as they were technically called. Field agents typically took them on all missions for overnight stays and in case of delays; they contained a change of clothes, normally pajamas, a few dry food items, and other small supplies. Barton and Romanoff rarely brought theirs on one-day missions anymore, their track record being so good that they were practically never faced with the need and had gotten a bit cocky about it. Someone from SHIELD had apparently and thoughtfully flown the bags down for the three of them. Phil noted that his bag was noticeably a bit older than the other two. He had not had much field work in several years, and almost none that required staying overnight. He checked the hallway to see if anyone was around, and pulled the bags inside.

Clint and Natasha had in the meantime cleared off the second bed, their discarded uniform parts and various weapons piled in the corner nearest their bed for easy access. The two silently took their bags. Natasha sauntered into the bathroom with her bag, politely leaving Clint and Coulson to change their clothes. Phil pulled out a few granola bars from his pack and eyes them suspiciously. They had been expired for almost a year. He tossed them in the trash can and went about undressing. Though he, on principle, rarely allowed other agents to see him dressed down, Phil did not want to sleep in his tailored suit, and in the end he had to admit that the comfortable sweatpants and worn-in black tee shirt he had packed in his go-bag years ago actually felt quite welcome after the long day he had had.

Barton had stripped to his black boxers and was holding up a very faded purple tee. Phil snorted.

"What?" Clint asked, mock offended. "You don't like my jammies?"

Coulson smiled. "Purple's really your color," he said. It made Clint laugh, which was good to hear. He was almost back to his usual, sarcastic, jocular self, for which Phil was glad.

Natasha came out of the bathroom, having somehow showered in that short time, with her normally wild red hair wet and unusually tame. She was wearing short cotton shirts and an oversized gray shirt that Coulson was almost positive had belonged to Clint at one time. Barton threw a fluffy pillow at her, which she good-naturedly allowed to hit her before catching it.

"Tash, we're gonna have a sleepover!" Clint exclaimed in a girlish voice. "You wanna braid my hair?"

Natasha playfully whipped the pillow back at him with a wicked grin. It smacked him full in his smirking face with a "poof" and muffled his laughing. Coulson rolled his eyes, reminded that Clint Barton's usual self was an idiot.

Phil retired to the bathroom to brush his teeth. While he studied the dark circles forming under his eyes in the cracked mirror, he could hear the two agents talking quietly in the other room. He glanced sideways, finding that he could actually see half of them reflected in a mirror mounted on the wall outside the bathroom. Natasha was sitting behind Clint on the bed, rubbing out the knots always left in his shoulders by his bow. It was obviously a private moment, but Coulson was a spy after all. He couldn't make himself not listen.

"I'm pretty sure he already knows; he's not an idiot," he heard Natasha say.

"I'm sick of lying about it, especially to him. On the other hand, declaring it out loud would be impossibly awkward. "

"I mean we don't have to outright tell him all about it, we can just do what we would normally. Pretending nothing's going on would be even more awkward."

"Well we can't exactly do what we would normally do." There was a giggle from Clint.

"Well obviously not THAT." Natasha chuckled. "I mean the rest of it."

"Yeah, I guess. I mean, if he asks, I'll probably be honest. He would know if I was lying anyway. Otherwise, he can assume whatever he assumes."

"Sounds good to me."

Phil was trying not to look at the mirror on the wall, but he did catch the small movement when Clint turned around and pressed a sweet kiss to Natasha's lips. He told himself he didn't see that.

When he came out of the bathroom, Clint went in and shut the door, and Coulson heard the shower turn on. Natasha was sitting cross-legged on her bed, brushing her hair. He sat on the edge of his own bed, figuring this would be his only chance to talk to her about her partner tonight.

"So what exactly happened today, Tasha?" he asked her cautiously.

She put her hairbrush down and shrugged wearily. "Barton didn't get to the building by the time he was supposed to be there to back me up from the walkway around the second floor. I couldn't take out all those thugs alone, not quickly enough, anyway, and one of them ran off and killed the girl in a panic or something. It was more my fault than anything. I didn't check in first, forgot to make sure he was even there before I went in. I just assumed he would be, like he always is. I guess he had lost his com in the crash, so he couldn't warn me he was running late. It was really stupid. Please go easy on him, Phil, he still thinks it's completely his fault that poor kid died, and he won't listen to reason. It's eating him up."

Phil wasn't sure he had ever heard Natasha speak so much at one time before. Clearly she was worried about Clint. He mulled it over, and decided to attribute the wretched fiasco to a com failure. It could easily be spun that way, and hopefully no one would be reprimanded too harshly. "Is Barton going to be okay?" he asked her quietly.

"He'll be fine." She sighed. "Unfortunately it's not the first time someone innocent has died because we messed up. It probably won't be the last." She wiggled herself under her covers and flicked off the light next to her bed. Phil pulled back the ugly orange quilt and climbed into his own bed, mentally noticing the slight scratchiness of the obviously new, cheap cotton sheets. He was suddenly so tired, however, that he found he couldn't have cared less. _At least they're clean, _he told himself.

Sleep was gently tugging at him when Barton walked out of the bathroom humming something and drying his hair with a towel, rousing Coulson a bit. Clint glanced briefly at Phil, apparently thinking he was asleep; he dropped the towel silently on the floor and climbed on top of his bed directly over Natasha. The faint light coming from the streetlight outside through the blinds fell in stripes across Clint's purple-shirted torso as he draped himself gently on top of Tasha, the covers still between most of them, and slid his hands under her shoulders, his forehead resting against hers. With a wordless murmur of approval her arms wound around his neck, one running up and into his short hair. They stayed that way for a long time, eyes closed; unaware that Phil could see them. He suddenly felt awkward, and though it was perfectly innocent on their part, he was still aware that he was intruding on what was probably the most intimate moment he would ever witness between the normally reserved and professional spies.

He was afraid that the moment would soon become less innocent, with them thinking he was asleep, but to his relief, Clint climbed under the covers and sprawled out on his back, while Natasha lifted her head to allow his arm to stretch out under her neck. She turned so she was facing Phil, away from Barton, her back pressing against his side. He curled his arm around her body and held her tight, and let out a content yawn. Neither of them moved after that.

Phil was struck by how natural and practiced those movements were, and with the realization that this was the way they always slept, more likely than not. With both their backs covered, they felt safe; touching each other guaranteed that both would be awoken if anything were to happen. There was a comfortable closeness in it that clearly transcended friendship in one way or another. His sleepy brain found it to be a little bit cute. He, like most of the agency, had speculated that Clint and Natasha were sleeping together. He had simply assumed that they used it to let off steam after adrenaline-packed missions, or maybe out of boredom. It had never crossed his mind that they might have an actual relationship. For some reason, the thought made him glad that fate or SHIELD or what-have-you had placed these two together. That was the last coherent thought he had before succumbing totally to sleep.

Having been a light sleeper all of his life and even more so upon joining a secret government agency, Coulson was dragged abruptly from a dream about cellos by a small frightened noise from the other bed that he wasn't entirely sure he hadn't dreamed. After a second, however, he heard a truly pitiful whimper from Natasha. His shock that Romanoff was even capable of such a vulnerable sound, sleeping or not, quickly gave way to a spike of adrenaline when he processed that something might be very wrong in the hotel room. His eyes snapped open and he turned to the other bed. No one was being attacked, but Natasha's face was scrunched up in fear; she was clearly having some kind of nightmare.

She let out another whimper and within a second, Clint had rolled onto his side, one arm still under Natasha's neck, wrapped the other hand around her waist, and pulled her close against his torso. Clint could faintly hear him mumble "s'ok Tash," and her face relaxed immediately.

Phil fell back asleep quickly, after making a note to himself to hold onto the mental image of the two highly-trained, hardened assassins spooning for future blackmail.

Later, he was jolted awake far more rudely by a piercing scream, alarmingly close-by. He was sitting straight up, his gun pulled from under his pillow, cocked and aimed toward the hotel room door all in less than a second. The scream had come from Barton, who was now sobbing frantically, upright in the other bed. Natasha was somehow already on her feet next to the bed, with the light turned on, her gun trained on her panicking partner. Phil hadn't even seen her move. Clint flew out of the bed with a choked noise and bolted into the bathroom, collapsed with a thump, and proceeded to retch violently into the toilet.

Natasha gathered her wits and quickly followed him. He had stopped throwing up and resumed the broken sobbing that wrung Phil's heart. The sobbing was muffled then by what he gathered was Natasha hugging him. Phil could only make out a few of the muted words Clint was rambling, but he caught "that girl, that poor girl," and "all my fault" amid the hiccups and scattered sobs. Natasha just shushed him softly until he was quiet, apart from the occasional sniffle. Eventually the pair came back into the room together, where she pulled off Clint's t-shirt, now drenched with sweat. She tossed it onto the pile of clothes and squeezed his hand gently.

As they climbed back into bed, Clint cleared his throat and uttered a raspy apology, his red eyes meeting Phil's briefly. Suddenly awkwardly aware that he was still sitting up and gaping, Coulson hastily slid back down into his bed. Natasha flicked the light off once again.

"No, no, I mean, it's… fine. Fine." he stuttered out uncomfortably. Nothing more was said.

Clint shifted down in the bed and buried his face in Natasha's neck, one arm draped over her waist and their legs tangled together. She kissed his forehead and stroked his hair softly until he fell asleep, exhausted. She was singing something pretty and Russian, so quiet Phil could barely hear. It took longer for him to fall back asleep this time, adrenaline still pumping through his veins.

The three all woke to the horrible squawking of the alarm clock that no one remembered setting. It was six in the morning. Not two seconds later, Phil's cell phone was ringing. Fury was on the other line, rattling off orders and details while Phil's brain struggled to catch up. There would be a pick-up for Barton and Romanoff two blocks from the hotel in half an hour. Bags with civilian clothes would be dropped off in ten minutes; they would need to make their way to the pick-up without attracting the attention of the few low-level thugs still prowling the city looking for revenge for the previous evening and the havoc wreaked on their organization. Phil was to meet Fury in the cantina next door at seven sharp, to coordinate the rounding-up and questioning of said remaining thugs.

Phil noted that Fury had travelled to Mexico already this morning, and briefly wondered if his boss ever actually slept.

He relayed the orders to the two sleepy agents, who were already up and about, packing their uniforms, pajamas, and weaponry into their bags. There was a knock on the door, and after checking the peephole, the spies wordlessly traded their bags for the ones held by the black-garbed agent outside the door.

Clint sniggered as Natasha pulled out a dainty yellow dress and an enormous sunhat. He stopped when he held up a truly hideous Hawaiian shirt, and Natasha laughed even harder at him. Even Phil couldn't help but chuckle at the horrified look on Barton's face. Phil went to the bathroom to change into the slightly wrinkled suit he had worn last night.

"So we're going with horrible tourists? Not very covert," Clint sighed.

"Yes, but no one will pay us any mind anyway," Natasha said, as she pulled on a long blonde wig.

"Let's be horrible French tourists."

"We were French last time. Dutch."

"Fine, Dutch. At least that hair will support the image."

Coulson exited the bathroom as Natasha was strapping a tiny pistol to her thigh, and Clint tucked a larger one into the back of his cargo shorts. He suppressed a look of shock when he watched them open the top drawer of the nightstand, pull out what appeared to be wedding rings, and slip them on. _Just part of their cover_, he told himself. _But in the nightstand?_ He shook it off.

When they were ready to leave, the two spies turned toward him. Barton looked like he was trying to find the right words, to ask Coulson for something that he knew he had no right to ask of a boss, but hoped he might ask of a friend.

Romanoff just stared Phil down, her eyes pleading silently for his discretion, and at the same time full of trust that he would be discreet. She had never outwardly shown him that kind of trust before. He wouldn't betray it.

"Don't worry." Coulson said plainly, with a genuine smile. Nothing more needed to be said.

Clint shook his hand, and the two left without another word.

Coulson took a seat in the cantina at ten minutes to seven and ordered a _café _from the waitress. Fury walked in, also early, as Phil knew he would be, and sat in the chair opposite him.

"_Buenos dias_, _jefe_," Phil chirped, with cheer that rang a little truer than it usually did.

"_Hola._" Fury replied, his voice think with sarcasm. "So what exactly happened last night, Agent?"

"Just a com failure. Nothing more," Phil said. "And in the end, everything got tied up neatly with almost no collateral damage." He felt a pang of guilt, referring to the poor dead girl in such cold terms, but kept it safely in check. He knew Fury was already unhappy about the failure of that particular part of the mission. "It wasn't anyone's fault, really. And the aftermath was just stranded agents trying to complete his mission by any means necessary, which I believe you instructed them to do," he added bravely.

Fury cocked his good eyebrow at that, but seemed to accept it. "Regardless, we've got some work to do this morning to tidy up. I need you on your best game," he said. "How did you sleep?" he then added, with false politeness.

"Oh, fine. The mattress was a bit firmer than I like, but I managed," Coulson deflected, suddenly aware of what was coming next.

"I must confess, I had some ulterior motives in placing you all in a booked hotel last night." Fury said.

"I thought you might have." Coulson sipped his coffee.

"I've been a bit suspicious of Barton and Romanoff's relationship for quite some time. Until last night, there didn't seem to be any problems with their performance. You're my best agent, and they both trust you. I knew you would either catch something between them, or catch them faking innocence if they were. Coulson, I need to know if the nature of their relationship is going to affect them in the field. We can't have that. If they need to be split up, I need to know. And I know you know."

Phil took his time before he answered, finishing his coffee and asking for a refill. "Their relationship is…. symbiotic," he explained. "Not quite co-dependent, but not independent either. They do need each other. They are literally so attuned to each other that they don't even need to speak. It doesn't affect them negatively in the field; if anything, it makes them more efficient. You know those two are the most effective field agents we have. I think splitting them up would be a huge mistake. They work better together than they ever could with anyone else," he stated calmly and confidently.

Fury stared him down, thinking about it. Finally, he sat back in his chair. "Alright, if you say so. I trust your judgment," he said. The conversation was clearly over.

Phil relaxed a bit. He really did believe they were better together, on and off duty. And irritated as he was with his boss for putting him in such an awkward situation to spy on his best two agents, he did feel better because of it. He had been able to put to rest some of the doubts in his mind now that he basically knew the gist of the relationship between Clint and Natasha.

Still, something was still nagging him about those rings.


End file.
